In the summer of 55 - Berberic behaviour

[Lorenzo]

Can't resist a book flyer that starts "In the summer of 1955,
five undergraduates, officially sponsored by the Oxford
University Exploration Club..."

Anyway, I bought this old book about the trip of these
undergrads to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to inter alia,
study Berber culture. Apart from several 'firsts' for
Europeans climbing miscallaneous peaks, a look at the
distribution of abnormal blood haemoglobins (Pasternak and
Roberts 'Man' 1956, 52) and the collection of some thousands
of insect specimens, a variety of molluscs and worms, plus a
live Barbary Ground Squirrel, they had these background notes
of interest written by the Zoologist part of the
quintravellers (Bryan Clarke)- "The Berbers have inhabited
Morocco, and indeed the whole of North Africa, since very
early times. In Marrakesh and the south they far outnumber the
Arabs. Since the two races have been intermarrying for more
than a thousand years, it is often impossible to tell the
racial origin of a particular man or woman. Nevertheless,
large numbers of pure Berbers still survive, particularly in
remote mountain regions [cf. haplotypes in Swiss remote
mountain regions]."

"The Berber often has a fairer complexion than many Europeans.
His face is short and broad, with high cheekbones and slanting
eyes, which give him an almost Mongolian appearance...The
origin of the Berber race is a mystery. Obne theory suggests
they are a Celtic-Iberian mixture and that they migrated from
Spain many thousands of years ago. ...Recent studies have
shown [book published 1959 in the 'Travel Book Club edition' -
can hear choking from her] that in the frequency of some of
their blood groups they strongly resemble the Basques of
northern Spain, whom anthropologists believe to be survivors
of a race which formerly populated much of Europe."

Then other theories of origin are mentioned. Language is
unlike Arab or any African tongue, the modern Touareg
inscriptions in the desert "bear a close resemblance" to
Berber wrtings of about two thousand years ago which have been
excavayed along the North African coast.

Interestingly, according to the author, the Southern side of
the Atlas mountains,where the deeply cut river Draa trickles
into the Sahara desert, was once a land of lion, hippo and
elephant, as recorded by Latin and Greek authors. Even in the
recent past it had huge plantations of olives, since destroyed
by goats and increasing aridity. The Atlas mountains have
juniper scrub. Pollen of these two have been found in
Ethiopian Australopith sites. Olive pollen, at least, is
produced in huge amounts, is light, and washes. Maybe this dry
upland/river valley complex is the tread on the Northern
African great wheel. The centre may always have been
relatively dry, perhaps causing a flow of peoples along the
periphery, down the coastal belt to West Africa on one side,
and skirting the festering Nile to Sudan and Ethiopia on the
other, blocked by the stinking disease ridden foetid jungles
of central Africa, picking up eddies of humanity....

To come back to the topic, sampling of these mountainous areas
may be more useful. By the way, there was a passing reference
to an unusual ancient pattern of settlement in the Canary
Islands, which I can no longer find (the refernce, not the
Islands -off the coast of west Saharan Africa, down a bit from
the Atlas mountains).

Cheers, Lorenzo

[Mario Petr]

The Meditarrenian scrub is type of vegetation that grows
between 30 and 40 deg. of latitude at the places where cold
ocean currents meet land. This is usually at the west side of
continents. So, we have a pockets of this in California, in
Chile, Atlas mountains meets the description, but also in
South Africa and Australia (southern part). By far the biggest
pocket of this is whole Meditarranean, which is much bigger
than all other pockets together. So, what is the main
characteristic of those plants. They are using FIRE to
survive. They are producing very flamable oils. That way they
are producing fires that burn other plants. And they are very
adapted to fires. So adapted that some of those plants need
fire to open their seeds (without fire thay cannot reproduce).
If you want to scavange for food, it is much easier to scare
predators with fire, than hitting them with rocks. Especially
if you are a biped. If you want to be safe from predators, it
is easy to simply burn high grass (cats are hunting by short
bursts of speed [unlike dogs], so they must get close to their
prey; they are using high grass for cover). Cattle likes that
burned patches (probably because they are safe from predators,
and maybe they like new grass, too). Today people are burning
Savanna only for that same reason (to attract cattle) -- Mario

"Lorenzo" <lorenzo@naturalhub.com> wrote in message
news:3CE8D039.A736DC06@naturalhub.com...
> The Atlas mountains have juniper scrub.
Pollen of
> these two have been found in Ethiopian Australopith sites.
> Olive pollen,
at
> least, is produced in huge amounts, is light, and washes.
> Maybe this dry upland/river valley complex is the tread on
> the Northern African great
wheel.
> The centre may always have been relatively dry, perhaps
> causing a flow of peoples along the periphery, down the
> coastal belt to West Africa on one
side,
> and skirting the festering Nile to Sudan and Ethiopia on
> the other,
blocked by
> the stinking disease ridden foetid jungles of central
> Africa, picking up
eddies
> of humanity....
>
> To come back to the topic, sampling of these mountainous
> areas may be more useful. By the way, there was a passing
> reference to an unusual ancient
pattern
> of settlement in the Canary Islands, which I can no longer
> find (the
refernce,
> not the Islands -off the coast of west Saharan Africa, down
> a bit from the
Atlas
> mountains).
>
> Cheers, Lorenzo

[Philip Dei]

On Mon, 20 May 2002 22:30:17 +1200, Lorenzo
<lorenzo@naturalhub.com> wrote:

>To come back to the topic, sampling of these mountainous
>areas may be more useful. By the way, there was a passing
>reference to an unusual ancient pattern of settlement in the
>Canary Islands, which I can no longer find (the refernce, not
>the Islands -off the coast of west Saharan Africa, down a bit
>from the Atlas mountains).

You see some deep african like patterns in the canaries, also
testimony to the ability of ancient humans to colonize by sea.

Your point is well taken, Lorenzo, the point is not to sample
but how to sample, There are 100s of millions of anglo-nordic
individuals out their but a sample of 100 would pretty much
characterize the whole group. There are 4-7000 chuckchi and it
might required the same sample size to characterize them. I
think for instance that in the HLA survey, once they started
see the 'abyss' pattern in the french, they might have tried
avoiding cities and sampling regions of the country side
separately, if they had done this nodality in the french might
have been more apparent. Also in Italy, Spain.

I would make the following predictions (molecular)
1. North/South divide in Ireland
2. Scotland will appear as two separable elements
3. Multiple Nodes in Britian
4. Ilse of Manx?
5. Not sure what to expect if france is broken up.
6. North africa many groups
7. Greece, north versus south, what about the ilses.
8. Eastern europe is pretty well sampled
9. but central asia, some people claim that tribes have held
onto the same lands since their written history began
(which some claim is about as old as sumeria)
10. Saami?, Lapps, how to sample finland?
11. Caucasus mountains
12. Iran (3+ micro nodes)
13. India (enumable nodes)
14. Tibet, Burmese and malay highlanders
15. SE asia
16. Australo's, is it fair to treat them as one group, no.
ect.

See, I think europeans are so-so good at identifying nodes
within its population, but when it comes to identifying
nodality in other populations they will 'trip' over it, if it
reaches up and grabs them the ankle. Therefore there is an
institutionalized sampling bias, unfortunately. The other
problem is getting people to allow themselves to be typed. Who
gets to hospitals for treatment. Do the biaka pygmy have a
med-evac team if they get injured? The reason people are HLA
typed is because of the organ transplantation issue, which is
only available to a small proportion of the world. Coming up
as people live longer is diseases of the immune system. The
incidence for MG in Italy and sardinia has increased from
1/100,000 to about 5/100,000 in the last few decades. This
trend follows many other diseases. THe forth issue is deep
seated local hatreds between group, the so-called 'Why do you
want to sample our [slaves, enemies, aboriginals]' and
government restrictions for fear that genetic identification
of deep groups may have a political consequence, such as
contest for authority.

I would say that the survey from which I get this data . . .

HLA 1991. Proceedings of the Eleventh International . . . . .
. . Volume 1 Oxford Press 1992. Tsuji, Aizawa,
Sasazuki-Editors.

Is probably, at best about 1/5th complete with regard to
having a sufficient sample of Phil's nephrorian nodes.

Philip [pdeitik at bcm.tmc.edu]
http://home.att.net/~DNAPaleoAnth

For those folks that have Agent here is my filter file:

Author: Algis Kuliukas Author: Bob Keeter Author: Jabriol
Author: jabriol Author: James Michael Howard Author: Jim
McGinn Author: marc verhaegen Author: Paul Crowley Author:
Paul Kekai Manansala Author: Tim Tyler Author: Watch Tower AAT
Creation CreationEvolve Abortion Aquatic aquatic

[Bob Keeter]

in article 3CE8D039.A736DC06@naturalhub.com, Lorenzo at
lorenzo@naturalhub.com wrote on 5/20/02 5:30 AM:

> Can't resist a book flyer that starts "In the summer of
> 1955, five undergraduates, officially sponsored by the
> Oxford University Exploration Club..."
>

Yeah I know. Got a basement wall covered with "garage sale
gems" myself. Some pretty good, some pretty sad, not so much
because of the science, often as good as could be expected
with the state of knowledge, but often full of a "politic"
that would seem pretty archaic today. Picked one up at a
university booksale a cople of weeks ago. "Fossil Men" by
Boule and Vallois, just finished staggering through. Science
not bad for 1957 but dripping with politics that would be more
at home in 1939! 8-) For a buck though. . . . what can you
expect. 8-)

> Anyway, I bought this old book about the trip of these
> undergrads to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to inter alia,
> study Berber culture. Apart from several 'firsts' for
> Europeans climbing miscallaneous peaks, a look at the
> distribution of abnormal blood haemoglobins (Pasternak and
> Roberts 'Man' 1956,
> 52) and the collection of some thousands of insect
> specimens, a variety of molluscs and worms, plus a live
> Barbary Ground Squirrel, they had these background notes
> of interest written by the Zoologist part of the
> quintravellers (Bryan Clarke)- "The Berbers have
> inhabited Morocco, and indeed the whole of North Africa,
> since very early times. In Marrakesh and the south they
> far outnumber the Arabs. Since the two races have been
> intermarrying for more than a thousand years, it is
> often impossible to tell the racial origin of a
> particular man or woman. Nevertheless, large numbers of
> pure Berbers still survive, particularly in remote
> mountain regions [cf. haplotypes in Swiss remote
> mountain regions]."
>
> "The Berber often has a fairer complexion than many
> Europeans. His face is short and broad, with high cheekbones
> and slanting eyes, which give him an almost Mongolian
> appearance...The origin of the Berber race is a mystery.
> Obne theory suggests they are a Celtic-Iberian mixture and
> that they migrated from Spain many thousands of years ago.
> ...Recent studies have shown [book published 1959 in the
> 'Travel Book Club edition' - can hear choking from her] that
> in the frequency of some of their blood groups they strongly
> resemble the Basques of northern Spain, whom anthropologists
> believe to be survivors of a race which formerly populated
> much of Europe."
>
> Then other theories of origin are mentioned. Language is
> unlike Arab or any African tongue, the modern Touareg
> inscriptions in the desert "bear a close resemblance" to
> Berber wrtings of about two thousand years ago which have
> been excavayed along the North African coast.
>

Unless Im mistaken, I seem to remember from somewhere that
many of the Toureg actually professed the Hebrew religion
until fairly recent times (1500's or 1600's or something like
that). Interesting in a way, because I also sort of remember
some people conjecturing that their mysterious history traced
back to some stranded Crusaders or some such! Not sure where I
had seen that but I think it had to do with the traditional
Toureg sword or somthing. i.e. very much like the "christian"
swords of the middle ages (straight blade, straight slash
guard, etc.) , and could be wrong of course. The unique
writing does sort of suggest that they may have been in place
a bit before the Hebrews or Crusaders showed up though.

> Interestingly, according to the author, the Southern side of
> the Atlas mountains,where the deeply cut river Draa trickles
> into the Sahara desert, was once a land of lion, hippo and
> elephant, as recorded by Latin and Greek authors. Even in
> the recent past it had huge plantations of olives, since
> destroyed by goats and increasing aridity. The Atlas
> mountains have juniper scrub. Pollen of these two have been
> found in Ethiopian Australopith sites. Olive pollen, at
> least, is produced in huge amounts, is light, and washes.
> Maybe this dry upland/river valley complex is the tread on
> the Northern African great wheel. The centre may always have
> been relatively dry, perhaps causing a flow of peoples along
> the periphery, down the coastal belt to West Africa on one
> side, and skirting the festering Nile to Sudan and Ethiopia
> on the other, blocked by the stinking disease ridden foetid
> jungles of central Africa, picking up eddies of humanity....
>

You do spin a nice web of words! ;-)

I think that the petroglyphs of the Atlas mountains and other
rocky outcrops all over the Sahara betray a very active
"savanna culture" for a very long time. I had posted a piece a
while back about the discoveries of a very wildly changing
weather pattern in the atlantic during the ice ages. At least
in effect perhaps similar to the Pacific el Nino but with a
much more drastic swing in the average temperatures for
Europe. (+/- 10 deg F, if I remember right) Could have meant a
MAJOR swing in the precipitation patters of north Africa. That
alone could have "pumped" nomadic humans back and forth across
the alternately friendly and hostile plains.

> To come back to the topic, sampling of these mountainous
> areas may be more useful. By the way, there was a passing
> reference to an unusual ancient pattern of settlement in the
> Canary Islands, which I can no longer find (the refernce,
> not the Islands -off the coast of west Saharan Africa, down
> a bit from the Atlas mountains).
>

The mountain areas are probalby better places to look
because of the generally more reliable water supplies that
might have been there, but also they are more "exposed" than
the rest of the sahara area. Moe places for the early
inhabitants to have left their mark and perhaps some clues
as to where to look! ;-)

Just $0.02 and worth perhaps half that! 8-)

Regards bk

[Mario Petr]

"Mario Petrinovic" <mario.petrinovic@zg.tel.hr> wrote in
message news:acan8a$d5bd$1@as201.hinet.hr...
> So, what is the main characteristic of those plants.
> They are
using
> FIRE to survive.

BTW, this our main characteristic, too. We are even
eating burned food. What is Mediterranean scrub in
plant world, we are in animal world. -- Mario